Giving the only drink tickets to the students to hand out during poster presentations is a brilliant move.

One of my bugbears is how often people use idiosyncratic abbreviations and acronyms. I’ll let you have DNA, but otherwise, you’re almost always better off if you write words. The UK Government agrees:

Terms like eg, ie and etc, while common, make reading difficult for some.
Anyone who didn’t grow up speaking English may not be familiar with them. Even those with high literacy levels can be thrown if they are reading under stress or are in a hurry - like a lot of people are on the web.

21 July 2016

Today’s contribution comes from Patric Chua, who gave me permission to post this. Click to enlarge!

Patric had this to say:

Better Posters has been my guide for poster designs (Aw, thanks! - ZF), and I've followed the many ideas for this poster. I understand that PowerPoint is not the best tool, but I hope it will suffice.

The design of the poster is inspired by infographics - I did not want it to conform to the IMRAD template. Each section can be read independently and has its own method and results. However, I’m afraid that I’ve falling into the trap where I’ve placed too many information in. I also think that the poster lacks a strong entry point.

The piece de resistance is probably the bottom right corner where I followed the advice on Inviting interactions post. I plan to attach cardboard boxes and place comment cards in the first box to make it easier for the audience.

The amount of work that went into this is impressive. I’ve opened the file and seen just how many individual elements are incorporated into this poster. To work with that many parts in PowerPoint is a nigh Herculean effort.

The poster has a strong sense of organization. Although Patric says it isn’t doesn’t have to be read in a linear way, the poster leaves no confusion if you choose to go that route.

I agree with Patric’s own assessment: this poster has a lot going on.

The use of icons is a double edged sword here. Although they certainly add visual interest, I’m not sure they always make it easier to understand what’s going on. Icons should represent simple nouns, and here they seem to be used in several ways, sometimes seeming to represent steps in a process.

Even without changing any of the words, a few subtle design changes can help calm the visual noise and make it a little less intimidating.

Here’s the makeover. Spot the differences!

If this were a classic newspaper “Spot the difference” puzzle, I’d have the two side by side, and the answers printed upside down:

Here’s the side by side:

And thanks to this site, I can (almost) duplicate the fun of reading a print newspaper!

14 July 2016

Today's contribution comes from Larry York, and is used with his permission. Click to enlarge!

Larry’s own review of this poster:

There is too much text on the bottom of my poster, but the overall idea of the poster was a review of my recently published and ongoing work.

One thing this poster does well is direct the reader through the the tricky portrait format. It’s clear that this poster is meant to be read across, in rows.

Another thing it does well is the choice of colours. The blues and greens are clearly related to the colours happening in the figures. The background colours are subtle, although the greens might even be just a little lighter.

I agree with Larry’s own assessment that this poster has got too much going on, particularly in the bottom. But it’s not just the text. The overall feel of this is “jam packed,” but not in a good way. Less stuff and more space between everything would surely improve the appearance of this poster.

There are many complex graphs. The layout within each row is sometimes slightly confusing. In the first box, I have three graphs on top of text on top of a picture. The graphs don’t have any caption below them, so I am left to try to make sense of them by reading the text. Maybe the text should come first.

Similarly, on the left side of the top box, I’m forced to zigzag back and forth around the (nice but complex) pictures.

Short of a ruthless edit, there are things that might help out. I tried a couple of quick and dirty revisions. First, I put the title in a more prominent location. The title is 90% of your communication effort, and people will start reading in the the top left. Let’s put the title there instead of logos. I shrunk the logos a little to create a bit more space.

On the first box, I removed the thick blue lines to see if just colours would allow you to follow the flow of the poster. I didn’t do this for the boxes below, because... well... then this would no longer be a “quick” makeover.

The combination of the green box plus shadows would allow you to follow the reading order, but removing the heavy blue lines helps open up the poster and make it feel less cramped.

07 July 2016

I won’t say this is the best poster from the recent Evolution 2016 meeting, but it is my personal favourite. Click to enlarge!

This poster is by Emily Austen, who was kind enough to send me the PDF and give me permission to share it. I asked Emily if she had comments about the design. She wrote.

First, when I visit posters, I have way more fun if the presenter explains the poster to me than if I try to read it. I tried to make a poster that would encourage conversation.

Second, while designing, I was very inspired by this awesome poster by James O’Hanlon, which I am pretty sure was featured on your blog before. (It was! - ZF) That poster is brilliant.

This poster is also pretty brilliant. Of all the posters I saw at the meeting (and I saw all of them), this was the only one that stopped me in my tracks.

I love this poster. I love the full bleed flower picture. I love that the colours in that picture are carried throughout the poster. I love that each graph has a simple, short sentence describing the point it makes.

The only things I might change are truly minor.

The red used for Emily’s name under the title makes her name harder to read, not easier. I know it’s trying to carry through with the red and yellow used elsewhere in the poster, but it is too dark.

When I first looked at the poster, I thought the bottom “answer” might need just a tiny bit more breathing room, or be placed in a more prominent location. I might have tried the Columbo method for the title (make a statement instead of asking a question).

The acknowledgements in the left corner are are handled well, but the very first line comes close to the edge of the petal in the picture. Similarly, a petal and the word “trout” in the title come close to touching. Either separate edges or overlap them. For example, the middle petals look fine with graphs are on top of them because the graphs are clearly deliberately placed. The overlap shows that the graphs are meant to be on top of the picture. Objects that nearly touch create an uneasy tension.

But these are quibbles. This poster is gorgeous. Not every poster is going to have this built-in visual component (it is about colour, after all), but it understands that a poster is a visual medium and pushes it to a high level of design and even artistry. I think my next creation is going to borrow a few ideas from this one.